


Yield

by Natterina



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: AU, M/M, Other, Paopu Fruit, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: A dark heart is a liability, when it surrenders to sky-blue eyes and paopu fruits.Or, the one where Sora and Riku share a paopu fruit after the race.





	1. The Beginning

It starts with the race.

"Deal? The winner gets to share a paopu with Kairi."

And Sora stands there, one foot toeing the sand, feeling nervousness fight it out with uncertainty in his chest. His hesitation is long enough for Riku to cock his head to the side, his smug act of arrogance smoothing away into confusion, and the older boy furrows silver brows in reaction to Sora's expression.

"What, you don't want to share a paopu with Kairi? Seriously?"

Sora kicks sand in his direction, defiant and uncomfortable but unable to backtrack now.

"Well, I just, I'd rather share it with you." He pauses, watches as Riku's eyebrows raise so quickly they nearly fly off his face, and back peddles. "No, not like that! Well, I suppose it is like that, but I don't want to share it with you because I love you or anything, that'd be weird!"

Except he does love Riku, as much as he can considering his total lack of experience in such things, but it lies below the surface of his heart, uncertain even in this. Sora has spent years believing he should love Kairi, and he does, but he loves his best friends in different ways. Those years, he had believed his love for Kairi to be the romantic one, as his mother had told him it was supposed to be, but it had taken even longer to realise that the feelings Riku stirred in his chest were not jealousy and rivalry, but the urge to impress. His dreams of first kisses and gentle touches never involved flashes of red hair and hands smaller than his own. They involved toned biceps and a smirk arrogant enough to set his blood on fire.

Riku stares at Sora as his internal monologue sends him spinning into a crisis, and the wooden sword in his hand skims across the sand as it hangs loosely from his fingers.

"Let me get this straight, Sora. You want to share a paopu with, and tie yourself forever to, me?" His words are slow, as though he is not quite believing them, and Sora's blush goes from gentle pink to scarlet.

"Not like that!" _Definitely_ like that. "Kind of? I just, remember that woman from years and years ago, who said we should stick together? What if something happens to us out there, when we leave? Kairi is probably never going to be separated from one of us, but we could be, and you're my best friend and if we get separated then who knows what will happen! She told me never to leave your side!"

Sora's speech quickens with each word as his panic rises, and Riku whacks him on the arm with the sword to calm him down.

“Oi, can it.”

"Ow!"

"So you're doing it out of duty to me? Or to the woman we met when we were kids?"

Sora stamps his foot into the sand, frustrated.

"No! I just don't want to lose you. And I just... just do the stupid race okay? If I win, we share it, if you win, you can share it with whoever you want to." Sora trails off in a series of mumbled words, tone more of a rant than any indication of discomfort, but Riku smirks again, feeling lighter than he has in weeks.

Kairi appears then, in a flurry of sandals hitting the wooden decking and the jangle of bracelets as she jogs to meet them. Her smile is wide, and nothing in her expression makes them think she has heard their conversation, or noticed the atmosphere fizzing between them.

"Are you guys ready? On my count!"

* * *

 

Sora loses the race.

He's not sure if he throws it on purpose, unwilling to face the balloon of emotion growing in his chest with each flutter of Riku's hair in the wind, or the way his stomach jumps when the scent of sun cream and sweat is carried to his nose on the sea breeze.

But Riku reaches the finish line first, longer legs carrying him faster, and Sora reaches it to see that damned smirk stretched wide on his face, as always. Kairi whoops, clapping her hands for Riku's victory, and Sora stands there nearly stock still. The only movement is his chest, rising and falling from the exertion.

Kairi beams at him, and moves forward to place her hands on their shoulders.

"Selphie and I are gonna head over to the mainland to grab some ice cream. Do you guys want anything?"

Both boys shake their heads, and Riku briefly leans forwards to grab his knees and catch his breath before he straightens. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead: Sora may have thrown the race, but Riku looks as though he's _worked_ for it.

"Well, I'll be back in a bit! You two play nice: we can't leave tomorrow if one of you breaks an arm with those swords!"

Kairi leaves with another smile and a goodbye, promising to return within the hour, and both boys are left alone on the outcropping. Silence reigns between them, as Sora stares at the ground and Riku moves away, but when Sora looks up he realises he has to keep going up, because Riku is halfway up the tree with his pocket knife between his teeth.

"Wh-what are you doing?" The tree sways with Riku's weight and a particularly strong gust of wind, and Riku's words are lost around the wooden handle between his teeth. He removes it, one hand still wrapped around the trunk of the tree. Even below, Sora can see him roll his eyes.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Climbing a tree? Attempting to break your legs?"

The response is an exaggerated sigh, and Riku leans out along a thin branch with the knife in his hand.

"I know there's a brain somewhere underneath that mess of hair, Sora." He pauses, frozen in the air for a second as the tree sways. "Catch!"

Sora opens his hands without hesitation, and Riku reaches over as far as he can before he swipes the knife out: he hears it slice through a stem and something soft and weighty falls into his outstretched palms. Riku drops a second later, knees bent and grunting as the sand kicks up around him with the weight of his fall.

Sora stares: the paopu in his hands is perfectly shaped, and the orange colouring around the stem means it's ripe and ready to eat. In his periphery, Riku is there, smirking and proud at his own unpredictability.

"Well? I won, so I get to share it with who I want."

Sora grins, feels his cheeks flare up with a raging blush red enough to put Kairi's hair to shame, and leans forward impulsively to press his lips to Riku's.

Their kiss is an innocent one; Sora's teeth clack against Riku's with the force of his movement, but before he can pull back Riku snakes his free hand around Sora's neck and pulls. It is hard, their lips pressed tightly together, and Sora is as inexperienced in this as Riku is. The older boy may act smooth and certain, but Sora has spent nearly every waking moment of his life with Riku. Unless Riku found a girl to practice with that week he was supposed to be resting with chicken pox, or the weekend they were barred from seeing each other after fighting with an older guy in school, neither of them have any precedent for this. They are scared and uncertain to open their mouths to deepen it, and it ends up being as chaste as if they were kissing the hand of a king.

But it is a _kiss_ , and when Riku pulls away to cut the fruit in half his cheeks are dusted pink beneath the tan, and Sora's knees feel weak with giddiness. His grin is so wide it nearly splits his cheeks, and Riku hands him half of the fruit with a gentle shove to his shoulders.

"Don't be such a total sap. I'm just making sure you can't get yourself lost."

They eat the fruit in silence, sitting on the edge of the decking and dangling their legs with their bare shoulders touching. The wind blows Riku's hair into his face, making it stick to the juice on his lips, and Sora laughs so hard at his expression that he is nearly shoved off the side in response. They kiss again, a sweeter and gentler one that has none of the impulsive urgency of the first, and Sora finds he enjoys the pressure of Riku's hand on the back of his scalp, and the feel of silver strands sliding through his fingers. He feels a pull inside his chest, a tug towards the other boy, and he wonders if the legend of the paopu is really true.

Kairi returns within the hour and offers some fruit she picked up from the store, missing the sly look that passes between the two boys when they tell her they've already eaten.

But Kairi knows them better than they think she does, and she is far more observant than they give her credit for. She does not miss how the atmosphere between them has changed, the relaxed curve of Sora's shoulders and how Riku's smirks are softer, less defensive than they were that morning. Kairi sees how Sora looks as though he is walking in a sea of revelations, facing truths he had not seen before.

And Riku? Well, Riku looks to her as though he has had every wish he ever asked for handed to him on a plate, and she knows he has held a torch for Sora for as long as she has known him. Her own, short-lived torch had been doused and thrown in the sea the moment she saw that Riku's flame burned brighter than hers ever could, and Kairi has often wondered if Riku has loved Sora for longer than even he knows. She has despaired at Sora's obliviousness, has cringed when Sora's affections landed on her briefly, and has suffered through them both moaning at her about the other for silly reasons. Riku's competitiveness, Sora's inability to think straight, etcetera, etcetera.

She levels them both with a smirk to rival the smarmiest of Riku's, and takes two apples from the shopping bag and throws them into their laps.

"A paopu isn't that filling, you guys. Now, eat!"

No, Kairi may not have seen the sly grin they had given each other, but she sees their twin looks of horror at her words and giggles loudly. She shrieks with laughter when they get up to chase her, and together they run up the ramp towards their tree, their worries and fears dissipating into the breeze.

* * *

 

Their peace from the evening does not last. Sora and Riku stay on the island overnight, unintentionally, when they have stayed too long in the shack and the tide has come in. Sora does not wake when Riku slips out of the shack; he wakens only when the darkness has eclipsed the island, and he runs to the shoreline to find Riku almost _rambling_ about freedom.

“Come _with_ me, Sora. We can be together, and we can be _free_. We may never see our parents again, and there is no turning back, but isn’t it _worth_ it?”

Sora’s heart hammers in his chest as the insatiable urge to follow rises in his heart, pushing forwards to follow the other boy, to ensure they are never separated. He pushes forwards to Riku’s outstretched hand, but the darkness pulls at his legs and drags him back. Sora keeps pushing, forcing his feet to move even though it feels as though he is knee deep in sand.

And nothing matters to him more than the boy on the other side of the outstretched hand: Sora will follow him to the end of the universe if he has to. Their fingertips graze, grab on and clutch desperately, but whatever is pulling at Sora keeps dragging him down and away. Indents of Riku’s fingernails remain in the pads of his fingers, but Sora falls to his knees as the darkness wraps around Riku’s body like a cocoon. Tendrils of smoke and matter weave under Riku’s arms and along his chest, and Sora can only watch as the darkness overtakes them both.

When he opens his eyes he is carrying a key, and Riku is nowhere to be found.

* * *

They are in Traverse Town when he finally, _finally_ feels it. That pit in his stomach that he has learned to ignore disappears, replaced by a powerful tug in his chest that leads him towards the square. They fight the heartless that appears, Donald and Goofy following him eagerly but unsure _why_ he is so desperate to reach it.

And then there, in the middle of the battle, a flash of yellow and blue and a keyblade that is all black and red, and Sora feels _whole_ again. Riku steps closer, a smirk on his face but _fear_ and worry in his eyes, and the keyblade slung over his shoulder is all sharp edges and glinting lights.

If there were ever a blade to match Riku’s wit, it is this one.

“There you are. What’s going on?”

And Sora steps forwards, feeling as though his legs will give out under him, and he all but launches himself at the other boy. The hug is desperate, lean arms around skinny torsos, and as Sora buries his face into Riku’s shirt he notices that the boy no longer smells of sun cream and the sea breeze.

Sora pulls back and releases him, and before Riku can say anything he tugs at the older boy’s cheeks playfully, pinching them and showing his teeth. Riku’s hands fall from Sora’s waist, and come up to bat him away.

“Hey, cut it out!”

“I’m not dreaming this time, am I?” Because Sora has had many dreams of this reunion. He has dreamt that he caught Riku’s hand that night on Destiny Island: he has dreamt of bumping into the boy in other worlds, of a reunion of gentle kisses with his heart bursting, the paopu reuniting them. Riku laughs, putting a hand out to squeeze the tip of Sora’s nose. It’s cold.

“I sure hope not. Took forever to find you.” The hand moves to ruffle through Sora’s hair affectionately, and Sora’s body moves closer in reaction. He hugs again, clinging to the silver-haired boy without dragging him down, and one of Riku’s hands rests on his back in reaction.

Sora lets go when he hears Goofy shuffling behind him, remembering that they are actually here _with_ him.

“Have you seen Kairi, Riku?”

Riku blanches.

“You mean she _isn’t_ with you?” He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with slender fingers. “Don’t worry too much about it, Sora. I’m sure she made it off the island too. Who knows, she might even be looking for us now. We’ll be together again soon.” There’s something in his voice that seems _off_ , too cheerful considering the third member of their trio is missing, but Sora is so relieved at seeing _Riku_ that he pays it no heed.

Sora smiles, simply _happy_ to see Riku again, and neither of them notice the heartless that is hovering to their left. Riku steps closer, one hand on Sora’s neck, but Sora is utterly _oblivious_ to the oncoming kiss even as he leans in to Riku.

The heartless disappears in a clap of lightning, Donald’s stave raised high, and Sora’s eyes brighten. He grabs Riku’s wrist, _still oblivious_ , and pulls Riku over to them.

“Oh, you’ve got to meet my news friends! This is Donald, and this is Goofy. I’ve been travelling with them, trying to find you and Kairi.” They nod, with Goofy giving a wave, but Riku’s mood sours with what he interprets as a brushed off kiss. Sora’s hand is tight on his wrist, but he tugs it away.

“Uh, who are they?”

“They’ve been helping me! We visited so many places, looking for you.”

The smirk is back, but there’s a defensive edge to it that Sora has not seen in many, many years.

“Really? Well, what do you know? We must have just been missing each other.” Sora’s eyebrows furrow at the hostility, but he is distracted by Goofy placing large hands onto his shoulders and squeezing gently.

“And guess what? Sora’s the keyblade master!” Said keyblade wielder cringes: that is probably _not_ the right thing to say. Riku retaliates to the imagined slight by holding up Sora’s keyblade, and Sora’s eyes widen: when had he picked that up?

“So that’s what this is.” He holds it up, high, examining it. Sora lunges forwards, eyes narrowed, and frowns.

“Hey, give that back!”

But Riku holds it up higher, much higher than Sora’s shorter arms can reach, and Sora ends up pressed against him as he tries to reach his keyblade. They are close enough that their breaths mingle in the cool air, but it is not an intimate closeness. It is a spark of cruelty that Sora has not known Riku to possess before, far different to his usual taunting.

Riku throws it to the side, the sound of metal clattering across concrete, and shouts “catch!”

Sora summons it back to his hand, and shakes his head to be rid of the memory of the look in Riku’s eyes.

“So, you’re coming with us now, right? We said we’d stick together, and we’ve got this awesome rocket. Oh wait till you see it, Riku, you’ll love it!”

Something in Riku relaxes at the words, but whatever guard he has lowered flares right back up when Donald stamps his foot hard on the ground.

“No, he can’t come with us!”

“What?!” Sora’s head whips around so quickly that his hair smacks Riku in the face.

“Forget it, Sora!”

“Oh come _on_. He’s my _friend_.”

Sora stares down Donald with the best glare he can muster, determined to have his way in this of all things. He feels a tug in his chest, an echo of that emptiness, and then cold rushes over him before Goofy puts a hand back on his shoulder. Sora looks up, confused.

The space where Riku was stood is empty; the hairs on his arms raise at the loss of the warmth and familiarity of Riku standing beside him. He has spent so long with Riku by his side, belonging there in the space beside him, that he feels the loss keenly.

“He’s gone.” Goofy’s voice cuts through the loneliness, the jarring reality, and Sora feels his shoulder’s slump.

Elsewhere, Maleficent twists and turns the entire encounter until Riku tastes the bitterness like ash in his mouth.

“It is as I warned you. While you toiled away, trying to find the boy you love, he simply moved on and replaced you with new companions. And you were so certain that your little _fruit_ would bind you. You’re better off without that wretched boy and the imagined bond a sweet treat has given you.”

Riku shakes his head almost imperceptibly, but Maleficent catches it and swiftly moves her staff in an arc. The surroundings change, and then he is watching Sora through a window. Something in his chest lodges at seeing Sora so carefree and happy, despite Riku disappearing minutes earlier.

Something sour takes root, works its way into his heart and poisons the glow forged there by the paopu. Sora frowns, feeling the emptiness inside him flare once more, but when he turns to look out of the window the street is empty, and he knows within his heart that Riku is long gone.

* * *

Monstro is an ill-fated mess waiting to happen.

Sora is tired, and Sora is _sick_ of trying to navigate himself around the damned whale. Even his cheerful, sunny disposition is being beaten down by trying three different exits and ending up in the same room, and then trying to get to the mouth by going up and ending up in a _stomach_. It’s confusing, and his patience is running low. So, when that emptiness he has forgotten is there disappears, and Riku’s voice cuts through his impatience like a knife, Sora is ready to lose it.

“I thought you liked games, Sora? Or are you too cool to play them, now that you have the keyblade?” Riku speaks from the ledge above, the one Sora has been trying to reach for _hours_ now, but the lightness in his chest improves his mood, and he smiles up at boy whose eyes still make his heart skip a beat.

“Riku? Wh-what are you doing here?”

“Just playing with Pinocchio.” His words are light, _too_ light, and Sora sees the attempt at brevity when it comes.

“You know what I mean. You, you just _left_ in Traverse town. Did you find Kairi?”

“Yeah well… catch me, and maybe I’ll tell you what I know.”

Sora stamps his foot, frustrated enough without having to traipse after Riku in this damned giant _beast_ , but Riku only smirks.

“Come on! Don’t make me chase you!”

Riku laughs, but it echoes through the chamber, and before Sora can stop him he grabs Pinocchio by the wrist and drags the boy off in a clatter of wooden limbs.

But Maleficent lurks in the chamber beyond, and Riku huffs a breath at her appearance. He is tired of seeing her at the end of his interactions with Sora; is he not _allowed_ privacy?

“Why do you still care about that boy? He has deserted you.”

Riku clenches his fists, sick of her prattling on already, and shakes his head.

“I’m bound to him, now. It might have been a mistake, but I am.” And there is a part of him that aches with every word, that remembers stolen kisses that final day on the beach, the fulfilment of all he had ever _really_ wanted on that island. He had torn down a wall that had existed the moment he realised he _loved_ Sora, only for Sora to all but forget about him in the aftermath.

“I was just messing with him.”

“Of course you were.” Maleficent arches one delicate, unimpressed brow, before she disappears into the darkness of a tunnel. Riku watches her go, and feels his fingers scrape at his chest of their own volition. His nails have not been trimmed, and the skin breaks with the strength of his scratch. He is trying to pull out whatever it is that causes the feeling of emptiness, the ache and the pain whenever he thinks of Sora, but nothing works, and he sees spots of blood through the yellow shirt.

With a disgusted sigh, Riku throws the puppet to the floor, no longer interested. Sora runs through the cavern entrance as Riku opens the dark portal, and the last thing he sees in the chamber is Sora’s eyes locking with his own.

There is betrayal in those sky blue depths, and it makes him sick.

* * *

Sora wakes up vomiting on the way to Neverland, and it feels as though the heart in his chest is tainted with corruption.

He crawls his way to the bathroom, the gummi ship sailing smoothly for once, and rests his head against the white plastic seat until another wave rolls over him. He lunges to place his head _in_ the bowl, knowing he will not appreciate cleaning it up in the morning if he misses, and expunges the contents of his stomach with a groan so loud that it wakes up Donald.

The duck has the light on in seconds, though his stave rests by his hip, and knowing he can do little else he sits on the floor beside Sora as he recoils against the waves of darkness. A feathered hand gently rubs circles on his back, green cura magic seeping into him, but it cannot fight the darkness that is not _really_ inside of him.

Sora knows immediately why this is happening. The storm inside his dreams has increased over the last few days, and he knows it is because Riku is slipping further into the darkness. He has done something, accepted _some_ kind of deal, or perhaps he has simply given in to that which has always been in his heart.

Sora sends a prayer to any and all deities out there, to Hades or Zeus or Triton, to the god Aladdin had worshipped or the one Jane had mentioned in the Jungle, for _any_ of them to please save his friend. He does not know what a life without Riku entails, and he does not intend to start now.

* * *

If Monstro was the veritable mess, Neverland is where their worlds come crashing down.

The wind is whipping their hair around their faces, and Sora feels the cold on his skin too acutely without a proper coat, but Riku’s voice cuts through it all with its sheer _coldness_.

“I didn’t think you’d come, Sora. It’s good to see you again.” Except, Sora feels that Riku’s voice hardly reflects that: it is harder than a steel blade cutting through his ribs, and as Riku stares down at him from above his eyes glint in the low light, and there is a darkness there that has never been present before.

The breath escapes him in a gasp, and he is suddenly _terrified_ for Donald and Goofy, because whatever stands up on the second level of the ship’s bridge, it is not Riku.

“Where are Donald and Goofy?”

Except what is up on the bridge _is_ Riku, overcome by jealousy and darkness, and those words are the wrong ones to come out of Sora’s mouth. He sneers.

“Are they that important to you? More important than old friends? Instead of worrying about them, you should be asking about _her_.” Riku steps aside, and Sora nearly falls to his knees.

Because _her_ behind Riku is _Kairi_. But instead of looking like Kairi, who would inevitably be a flurry of indignation and rage at how her two best friends are acting like total _assholes_ , she simply _is_. Her legs are crossed, her arms folded delicately in her lap, but there is no life in her pointed face. Her brow is relaxed, her mouth open slightly, and her eyes stare at the floor without focus. She is a shell of red and purple and too-pale skin, and Sora _panic_ s.

“Kairi! Wh-what happened to her?”

“While you were off goofing around, I finally found her.”

Sora bolts forwards, ready to jump up the railing if he has to, but he is caught around the waist by a heartless that flings him to the floor like a sack of flour, and realisation hits him harder than a punch to the gut.

“Riku, _no_. You can’t do this; you can’t let them in!” The older boy scoffs, confident in the way that had always attracted Sora, but the dark undertone sends chills along his spine.

“I have nothing to fear, Sora. They obey me now.”

“At what cost, Riku! You’re being _stupid_! Sooner or later, they’ll swallow your heart!”

Another scoff, and Sora bolts forwards again, but the sword-wielding heartless holds him back at the tiniest tilt of Riku’s head. He wants to jump up there and hit him, beat his chest with his fists until _Riku_ comes back. But with Smee and Hook watching on, Sora cannot move without fear of a blade to the chest.

“Not a chance, Sora. My heart is too strong.”

“You idiot! This is proof that it isn’t! Riku, _please_. You promised me I wouldn’t lose you, that the paopu fruit would bind us so we would always come back to each other. Please, _come back_.”

If there is something that flickers in Riku’s eyes at those words, Sora cannot see it from where he stands. He cannot see Riku’s brief hesitation, cannot feel the surge of darkness at Riku’s back as Maleficent watches on though she is not visible. And Riku cannot give in, cannot prove the witch right when Sora has not bothered to care before now. He will not surrender when Sora has been gallivanting around the worlds without a care for him or Kairi.

Their gaze does not break, the tension between them does not swell, when Riku raises a hand in command. Sora is forced to look away first as a dark and wicked figure rises from the ground beside him, and Sora can feel the corruption of himself as it forms and stares down at him.

Not a word passes between them, when the ground beneath Sora’s feet disappears, and the younger boy falls down into the underbelly of the ship.

A chill passes over Riku as his heart hammers in his chest, but it is soothed by soft waves of darkness cooing at him, making him feel stronger for the sacrifice. He stares at the trap door for what feels like hours, and feels as though his heart has leapt into the hole with Sora. His chest aches, the power of the paopu urging him after it, but Riku clamps it down.

And whatever bond the paopu has set up between them, the strong string that binds them and thrums with every step the other takes, it all but snaps the moment that Riku steps into the portal with Kairi hours later. It twists and aches and burns when one betrays the other, setting the anti-Sora on the boy he is supposed to _love_.

He will not yield to pleading eyes, when those eyes have passed over him for far too long.

* * *

Sora feels the moment that Maleficent releases the untapped power inside Riku, releases _Ansem_ from the protected shell inside Riku’s heart. He feels it, because whatever bond has been living between them since they shared the paopu flares to life in a shock of gold and silver that makes Sora nearly fall out of his bed on the gummi ship. It reaches out with an urgency that has Sora at the ship controls before he is even fully awake, increasing the acceleration towards Hollow Bastion.

And when they land it eggs him on further, pushes him until he reaches the top of the ice and the waterfall to find Riku trying to _kill_ someone, a beast thrice his size but easily beaten when Riku is using the darkness so _easily_. He stops at the sight of Sora, lowering the keyblade he is wielding until it disappears. Sora can only walk towards him in silence, his expression almost _broken_ at the sight of his friend.

“I was wondering when you’d show up. We’ve always been rivals, haven’t we?” And standing opposite each other on the ledge, it certainly feels true. But Sora stares him down with sadness in his eyes, and something inside Riku’s heart yields. He pulls himself together, to keep the fight going, because he will _not_ give in to sky blue eyes and a bond forged by a damned _fruit_.

“You’ve always pushed me, as I’ve always pushed you.”

Sora shakes his head, and in that moment he seems older. He is weary and tired, and his heart tries to cocoon what is left of Riku in the man before him. The darkness is stronger, however, and Sora cannot save it.

“No, Riku. We’re not rivals. We’re _best friends_. You’ve always been my best friend, and I’ve always been yours.”

Riku scoffs at him derisively.

“We were _rivals_ , Sora.”

“We were _friends_. And somewhere down the line, you _loved_ me. And I think I loved you too.”

Riku moves his hand violently as he stamps a foot, and the keyblade reappears. Sora cannot look at it, cannot make himself face the embodiment of all the darkness inside Riku.

“ _No_. It ends here, Sora. There can’t be two Keyblade masters.”

“What are you talking about?” Something in Sora still seems defeated, still does not believe that the Riku before him is entirely gone.

“No? You soon will. Let the Keyblade choose its _true_ master.” And then Riku raises a hand to try and take the keyblade for himself, but the part of Sora that loves _Riku_ will not give it up. The Keyblade shakes and vibrates in Sora’s hand, but it does not yield to the power Riku holds until Riku himself can summon the darkness required to _take_ it. It will not come, because a part of Riku's heart still yields to Sora, is still weakened at the sight of eyes the colour of the sky.

The part of him that hesitates, the part that loves Sora and does not wish to hurt him: that is the part that Riku clamps down as he shouts the cruellest words that will _ever_ leave his lips.

“As if _I_ would ever love _you_. Sharing that paopu with you was a _mistake_! I should never have tied myself to something so weak!” The words lance through both of their hearts. The last bit of light in Riku is smothered by the darkness as Sora’s heart breaks with the blow of those words, and the keyblade soars across the distance between them to land firmly in Riku’s outstretched hand.

Riku throws the wooden sword at Sora’s feet with an arrogant smirk that is _not Riku’s_ , and Sora watches him go helplessly.

* * *

 "Oh will you just _give up_ already?”

“No, not without Kairi.”

“Then the darkness will destroy you.” And when Riku’s outfit changes, Sora belatedly thinks that if the moment were not so serious he would start _laughing,_ because if there was any indication that it was not truly Riku before him, it would be Riku wearing a _fucking skirt._

So Sora stands there, unwilling to defend himself when Riku gets angrier. He is certain, absolutely certain, that if there is a shred of light inside Riku then he will not attack him. But Sora’s test fails when Goofy blocks the attack long before the darkness reaches Sora, and so Sora is forced to reach the conclusion that Riku is _gone_.

“How do you really think you’re going to fight me?”

“With my heart.” Sora doesn’t even flinch at Riku’s laugh.

“What good will that weak little thing do for you?”

“My heart may be weak, Riku, but it’s not alone. It’s become a part of your heart, as yours has become a part of mine. And it’s the same with all the new friends that I have made. I don’t _need_ the keyblade: my friends are my power!”

Miraculously, the keyblade in Riku’s hand flies back into Sora’s as Riku's heart hesitates at his words, and the young boy nearly falls backwards with the force of the light emitting from the metal weapon. It is warm to the touch.

“Now, give me back my _friend_!”

The battle is rough and taxing. Sora does not wish to hurt Riku, whilst Riku is consumed with enough rage that killing Sora is a definite possibility. But above all, Kairi must be saved. They had all promised, as children, to never let anyone else come between them, but they are disjointed and broken from one another. In the face of the boy he loves versus the girl who is almost a sister, Sora is forced to make a decision. And despite the paopu, and the ache for Riku that thrums in his chest, Sora chooses Kairi. She is the innocent party, the one who does not deserve to be pulled between the two boys she loves most in the world.

Sora finally gets the upper hand: he hooks the edge of his keyblade under the hooked arch of Riku’s, halfway down the blade, and yanks it towards him with all of his strength. The blade flies out of Riku’s hand and, before he can summon it back, Sora smacks him viciously in the throat with the flat of his own keyblade. Riku stumbles at the sudden pain, and Sora kicks his legs out from under him before following him to topple down to the floor.

The battle ends with Sora straddled over Riku, keyblade pressed to his throat to keep him on the floor. He releases it carefully, as the shadows in Riku’s eyes begin to clear, and grabs two fistfuls of the sinewy fabric on his chest. Sora lifts him briefly before slamming him back to the floor, and the desperation that seeps into his voice is almost embarrassing.

“ _There_! Are you done now? Can you be _normal_ again? Can you-“ Sora trails off for a moment, before he lifts and slams Riku back again. His voice cracks, and a tear falls down his cheek. “Can you come _home_? I want you back, I want _Riku_ back again. Give him _back_!”

Sora collapses, his head resting on Riku’s chest as he sobs, and so he does not see _Riku_ in those aquamarine depths. He does not see Riku’s face of despair as the weight of all he has done falls down onto him, nor does he see how Riku’s hand briefly lifts to press onto his back in comfort.

The part of Riku that panics manages to summon the strength to push Sora off of him, and that terrible skirt is _gone_ and he _looks_ normal again. But Riku stares at him in horror, before he turns on his heel and flees.

Sora starts, to go after him and make sure he is _him_ , but by the time he realises which direction the silver haired boy has gone, Riku is nowhere to be seen.

* * *

“You are _weak_.”

Riku turns to face the hooded figure behind him, a sheen of sweat on his face and bile dribbling down to his chin, and the figure _laughs_.

“I cannot kill him.”

“Because his heart was stronger than yours.”

“No, because he-“

Riku is cut off by the waving of one hand, and he clenches his fists tightly.

“Your heart is a liability, for all that it yields to pleading eyes. However, you can become stronger. You showed no fear in stepping through the door to darkness. Why should this be different? Plunge deeper into darkness, and your heart will grow stronger. You will not yield.”

“What should I do?” There is resignation in his voice, a desperation to save Kairi and prove himself the stronger beating out the indignant hammering of his heart at the thought of Sora.

“It’s really quite simple. Open yourself to the darkness.” And the figure says it as if it should be so easy, so simple to do something so terrifying. “Let your heart, your being, become darkness itself. A dark heart will not surrender so easily.”

And he does it.

Sora feels the moment that Riku opens up his heart to darkness. He feels it keenly in his chest when the last barrier of light around Riku’s heart buckles under the weight of the dark creature trying to take over him. He can detect the short and brief struggle before Riku is swallowed up by Ansem’s impatience.

The pulling of the paopu to the rooms beyond disappears entirely, and Sora’s breath catches in his throat at the absence of the tug that has lived in his heart for so long. He starts to hyperventilate, panic setting in to his bones as Donald places a hand on his arm in worry.

“He’s… he’s gone.”

He has no problem with plunging the keyblade into his chest, an hour later, if it means he can save at least one of his friends.

* * *

Lost somewhere in the between, a blond boy awakens with a curious sensation in his chest. His skin is pallid, and there is no pulse in his wrist: he is dimly aware that this should not be possible.

He stares out across the darkness, flashes of silver and blue and brown and red running across his mind. Something echoes inside of him, a weak and dim pull in a direction he cannot ascertain due to the total darkness surrounding him. It is an echo of something he is vaguely aware should be much stronger, and he presses a hand to his chest to try to grab at it. He touches nothing but a chest that does not vibrate with a heartbeat, and his cold fingers trail a line across where his heart should be before they fall to his side.

The boy tries to rise, only to find his knees buckle beneath him. He becomes aware of his body aching, and his breathing does not quite feel right. It should not come out in a grating sound, but he is not sure how to stop it.

Slowly, he pushes himself to his knees, and begins to crawl.

* * *

The waterway is dark and dreary, but it is also the only place in Traverse Town that Sora feels comfortable leaving Kairi. The girl, adaptable and eternally optimistic, feels right at home in the tunnels that are barely one step above sewers, and Sora has seen her frequently taking tea with Merlin and giggling enthusiastically at his stories.

His chest aches. Kairi seems so happy despite their circumstances, and it almost makes him wish he'd been able to love her. Riku's words from their battle still cut deeper than anything the keyblade had inflicted, and if he closes his eyes he can still hear that awful " _sharing that paopu with you was a mistake! I should never have tied myself to someone so weak!"_

It rings between his ears every hour. His eyes ache and burn with every moment he thinks back to Hollow Bastion, to the sad reality that his best friend is _gone._ Taken, possessed by the man who called himself Ansem.

Sora is haphazardly, and aggressively, throwing stones into the water from an embankment when Kairi approaches, an hour before they are due to chase after Ansem.

"Are you okay?"

_"-should never have tied myself to something so weak!"_

Sora shakes his head. No, he feels half-whole in a way he did not before, and his best friend has just tried to _kill_ him.

"No. I miss him, and he... he might never be coming back." Kairi's hand falls to his shoulder, a gentle weight that grounds him, and Sora leans into her touch. Her arm moves to wrap across his shoulders, and the comforting gesture chases away some of the fear in his heart. It doesn't chase away the tears, however, the ones that fall silently when he remembers all that has come before.

"C'mon Sora, you know Riku is stronger than him. Riku stopped him from attacking us; he’s in there _somewhere_. And he's fighting to come back to you."

"How can you know that?" And Sora looks at her, with those big blue eyes of his all filled with unshed tears, and Kairi feels her heart break for them. These are _her_ boys, her best friends, and it kills her to see them so disconnected from one another.

"Because you are the single most important thing in Riku's world. You might not love him yet, not as deeply as you can, but he _loves you_. He would do anything not to see you hurt."

Sora scowls.

"I think him trying to kill me to steal your heart kinda shows that might not be true."

Kairi wants to smack him upside his head, so frustrated she is at seeing her cheerful Sora looking so down. She'd expect this from _Riku_ , but never Sora.

"That wasn't him. He gave in to the darkness, and that's sad, but that witch took his love for you and twisted it, Sora. And he- he is going to regret it for the rest of his life, I _know_ it. No matter how deep the darkness, a light shines within." Kairi's words are sad as her hands run soothing circles across his back, and Sora tightens his fists, realisation dawning in his face.

"You're right, Kairi. I have to save him. I won't lose him to the darkness! If he's in there, I'll save him!" The change is rapid: Sora straightens, full of conviction and certainty, and Kairi giggles. “Our hearts are always connected!”

"There we go. Now, I came out here to give you this." She hands him the charm she has made, in the shape of a paopu fruit, and Sora looks at it quizzically.

"What is it?" Sora double takes when he realises Kairi has drawn all of their faces on it. Kairi is on the top most point, the center, with Riku and Sora on her left and right respectively. He wonders if that was intentional symbolism.

"It's my lucky charm! So be sure to bring it back to me!" She points at his chest, giving him a playful push with her forefinger. "As long as you have it, we're linked like the paopu. So you have to bring it back."

"I will, I promise!"

Sora holds it gently between his fingers, as though it were made of fragile paper. Kairi holds her hands out to take Sora's own, holding the charm and his hand between her palms. She looks at him sincerely, her eyes wide with fear and hope lurking in them, and her hands are warm around his own.

"Bring him home, Sora. Preferably in one piece, but _bring him home_."

* * *

" _Sora, Kairi… I’m sorry.”_

He hears it in a dream, so vividly that he jolts awake as though the words were spoken in his ear. Sora sits upright in the uncomfortable bed on the gummi ship, red blankets pinned to his hips, and looks around the cabin.

“Riku?”

Something kindles inside of his heart, a soft glow-worm that wedges its way under a flap and burrows in deep. Several minutes pass before somewhere out there, wherever he is, Riku searches inside his own heart for a hint of Sora, and Sora _feels_ it. His body warms with a hope that is not his own, a relief that is so palpable it fills the cabin, and Sora pushes back gently in the hope that Riku can respond.

He does not, but Sora feels his body come alive with determination that is both his own and Riku’s, and he lays his head back to the pillow with a glow he has not felt in a long time.

* * *

He has done this before.

Stood on the opposite side of Riku, hand outstretched and desperate to reach the boy on the other side. But this time, Sora’s hand cannot physically pass through the door, just as Riku’s cannot either. Sora stares at Riku with tears in his eyes even as Riku smiles hopefully at him, an encouraging grin on his face that is so out of place considering recent events.

“ _Come on_ , Sora. Together we can do this!”

“Are you _insane_? With you on the other side?!”

And then the king is there, and Sora can hardly disobey a _king_ , but his heart all but claws its way out his chest in desperation at seeing Riku on the other side of the door. And it _is_ Riku, the one he’d sat on a beach with and kissed until the sun was setting and the tide was sweeping in, the one who has loved him for half his life. And Sora is expected to let him be _locked_ in the darkness?

“Don’t worry! There will always be a door to the light.”

“Sora, you can trust King Mickey!” Goofy says it with all earnestness, but Sora still looks helplessly at Riku, whose fingertips are inches away from his own.

“Sora, _now_. They’re coming!”

Sora is once again forced to choose between Riku and everyone else. One hand drops from the door as he stares into aquamarine eyes, and Riku shakes his head vehemently.

“Don’t you dare, Sora. Close the door.”

Sora refuses to look at him, squeezes his eyes shut tightly as he pushes against the door half-heartedly with his shoulder. It rather feels as though most of the work is being done by Riku, but Sora is ultimately _good_ underneath the grief, and so he forces himself to close the door. Riku looks down at him one more time, and Sora opens his eyes to get one last glimpse of his friend through the crack in the door.

“I’ll find you again. I promise.”

Sora nods, and then the door is sealed.

* * *

Sora will remember nothing of Castle Oblivion. But somewhere in there, when faced with the Riku Replica, there was a part of him that _knew_ it wasn’t the real Riku. A part of him felt intricately connected to a Riku who was present somewhere else in the castle, but Sora will never understand _why_ when he’d shared the paopu with Namine.

Didn’t he?

And Riku will remember bursting into a room only to be faced with the gutting sight of Sora floating in a white pod, doomed to sleep until Namine can undo the mess she has made.

He remembers everything, but not for long.

* * *

Three months pass, and Riku tears at the raggedy mess that he dares to call his hair as he paces back and forth in the underground laboratory. Namine sits at the computer, her fingers tapping away at the keys, providing the only sound in the room outside of the dim hum that Sora’s pod emits.

There are tears in his eyes, both from the pain of his emotions and the grip he has on his hair, but Namine ignores them. She has learned that Riku himself is the only one who can work through his emotions when he is like this, and sooner or later he will finish pacing and leave the room with his leather coat flapping behind him.

She will admit, sometimes, that she is impressed with how much Riku has managed to retain, despite her having to break apart the memory of Sora and put it back together again. Unlike others, Riku has never truly forgotten what Sora looks like, has not forgotten the sound of laughter on a summer breeze like so many others have. There are still significant holes in his memory, but Riku remembers more than anyone. Whether it is because of his physical proximity to Sora’s body, or because of the paopu they had shared so long ago, Namine does not know.

Then, out of nowhere, Riku collapses against the pod. His legs splay out on the floor as his back sags against the pod, and gloveless hands claw at his face in sadness and fury. Namine looks up from the computer, curious.

His hands move up his face to grab at his hair strands, his palms covering his eyes, and Riku lets out a groan that is half a frustrated scream. Namine watches, alarmed but unwilling to disturb him.

Riku can remember everything and nothing. He _knows_ that he spent an afternoon kissing Sora on a beach, but he cannot _remember_ doing so. He knows they shared a paopu, but cannot remember the act of sharing. Riku is certain without a shadow of a doubt that he loves Sora, and he can _feel_ that, but he cannot remember ever coming to the realisation. Riku knows that Sora’s smile is bright enough to vanquish darkness, that his laugh is infectious and his eternal optimism amazing and frustrating in equal measures, but _he cannot remember it_.

Riku knows he is in love with sky-blue eyes and tanned skin, with hair so brown and wild it could not be tamed, but he can barely remember what Sora looks like. He knows that his dark heart surrendered to sky-blue eyes and a paopu fruit, but he cannot remember anything not shrouded in darkness. It is like a flicker of something in his periphery: he remembers it all when he does not _think_ if it all. Sora is there in all of his glory, until Riku tries to _look_ , and then the boy disappears through his fingers like sand and water.

Even worse, whilst his heart drags him desperately towards the pod in the centre of the room with a bond he cannot remember forging, to a boy he cannot remember loving, there is another corner that yearns to drag him to someone else. Sora’s nobody, the boy he has not seen but could find in an instant if he followed the tiny echo at the back of his heart. On the rare nights that he dreams, he either dreams memories of Sora that are long gone by morning, or he sees flashes of blond and black and silver.

And to add to it all, one thing he knows for certain is that he had tried, and nearly succeeded, in killing the boy he loves.  _That_ he can recall in spectacular detail: Namine need not worry about any gaps in his memory there. He remembers telling Sora that sharing the paopu was a mistake, the he could never love a heart as weak as the brunet's. It is  _this_ memory above all else that summons the tears to his eyes, and the regret in his chest is a gaping maw that will not close for as long as he lives.

But still he cannot  _see_ it.

Namine comes into view, having left her seat the moment she realises that Riku’s chest is wracked with sobs, and the young girl bends her knees to be at his level with one hand pressed gently on his shoulder. She is painfully aware of the fact that she is one of only two people who will ever get to see Riku fall apart like this: the other lies asleep behind them, ignorant to it all.

“Why? Why can’t I remember? Why do I _know_ these things, but I can’t remember?” Riku looks at his hands desperately, hoping to find an answer somewhere, but Namine shakes her head.

“You remember more than most. And that is enough to save him.” Her voice is gentle, soft, but Riku finds no comfort in it. Namine squeezes his shoulder tenderly, before she stands to her full height and leaves the room. She has no part in this grief, and her role in causing it is enough to make her feel unwelcome to witness Riku’s heartache. Only one boy ever had the right to see it.

Without her there, the room is almost utterly silent. The hum of the pod echoes around the room, and the small vibration it produces runs along Riku’s spine and through his fingertips. It is clean and white, not too dissimilar to the sound he expects there to be in a hospital at night. Sterile silence and the hum of a machine. He can hear his own breathing, and the sound of his own heart hammering in his chest. He does not try to stop the tears from falling, when he thinks of his friend behind the opaque pod.

And there, back pressed against the glass that separates him from the boy he loves, Riku breaks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm amazed at how well received this has been! Thank you to everyone who gave Kudos/Bookmarked it and commented! After so long not writing KH fanfiction, I'm now full of ideas! Keep your eyes peeled guys for a soulmate-identifying marks AU on the way in the next few days.  
> Enjoy the chapter!

It has been two hundred and twenty-four days since they closed the door to darkness. It has been one hundred and seventy-five days since Sora was condemned to the long sleep in the glass pod. Longer than both, since Riku has seen his smile.

He is in the library with DiZ, relaying his encounter from months before with the faceless being that called herself Xion, trying to ignore the flash of a bond that had flickered to life when he knocked her to the floor, when it comes back.

 _That_ memory, of falling from a tree to see Sora’s stunned face as he stares at a paopu in his hands. The memory of racing along the beach with as much strength as he could, pushing himself _harder_ than he ever has before for the opportunity to pull the rug out from under Sora and share the paopu with the boy he loves. The real, actual _memory_ of the moment he realised Sora loved him too, of sitting on the beach sharing stolen kisses that taste of sickly sweet paopu. He _remembers_.

Riku breathes in a gasp as the memory hits him in one fell swoop, and without saying a word he leaves DiZ in the library and descends through the mansion with the wind at his heels.

The room with the pod is in _chaos_. Namine is at the computer, inputting commands as fast as her fingers will allow her, and the floor surrounding her seat is littered with hundreds of drawings. The witch’s magic makes the room almost _crackle_ , and Riku runs up the pod with his eyes narrowed behind the blindfold.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know! I had his memories, but they’re _gone_.” Her voice is high pitched but calm, yet Riku can sense the tightly-reined stress behind it.

“How can they be _gone_?” The opaque glass has been lowered so Namine can work properly, and Riku looks up at Sora with a panic in his heart.

“I told you, I don’t know!” Namine’s fingers fly across the keys. “It’s like a puzzle, and I’m missing some of the pieces.”

“You seem to be struggling.” DiZ walks in as Namine stands from her seat at the computer and goes to stand in front of Sora. Riku feels her magic dampen, her instinctive fear of DiZ winning out over her efforts to save whatever is going on.

“A nobody is interfering, I think. Some of the pieces have gotten lost.” The girl all but withdraws into herself at DiZ’s presence, and Riku almost marvels at the sight. Namine holds one hand to her chest, and her shoulders droop as she looks at the floor.

“But what does it _mean_?” Riku can sense the impatience in his own voice, and it makes Namine retreat further.

“There is no way for me to finish.”

Riku imagines that, if there were a bucket nearby, he would be vomiting into it. As it stands, he pushes down the bile that Namine’s words raise to the back of his throat, and feels his heart all but drop into his stomach. But Namine keeps talking, and it keeps getting worse.

“If they’re gone – and they find their way into someone else – he’d never get them back.”

Riku turns to the young blond girl, agony on his face.

“What memories?”

Namine flinches, not from the harshness of his words but from the truth she is about to reveal to him.

“The last year. All of it.”

Everything that truly matters, then. The plan to build the raft, building it, leaving the island and fighting against each other due to darkness and misunderstandings. The memory of the keyblade, of all the souls he had saved on his journeys. Riku presses a closed fist to his mouth to stop himself from throwing up.

“But how? I _just_ got one of those memories back.”

Namine stamps a foot in frustration, and for a moment it is almost as though DiZ is not in the room.

“You’re an anomaly, Riku. You shouldn’t _be_ able to remember anything at all! No one else can, not Kairi, not Mickey, not any person he’s ever come across who has a heart.” She quietens for a moment, before her hands link over her stomach and she looks up at DiZ. “If his memories become her memories, she will not survive it. And he might not become whole again.”

Riku stares up at the pod, feeling his stomach roil at Namine’s words. It is strange; usually, in this room, the tether in Riku’s heart that urges him towards Sora is calm, and it is the closest he ever feels to being whole again whilst Sora is still asleep. But now, with the news hanging in the air between the three of them, his heart aches at the prospect of never seeing Sora awake again.

DiZ poses a question to Namine, but Riku does not hear it. He bites into his fist, fury and sadness washing over his heart in waves, and leaves the room in a flurry of fabric flapping against his legs.

* * *

And somewhere out there, in the months between, when Riku is trawling the shadows for a hint of the location of Sora's nobody, a redhead sits on the top of a tower watching the sunset with his best friend. He procures a paopu fruit, uncharacteristically nervous, and the blond beside him moves so sharply that he fears he will topple over the edge.

In the light of the sunset, the blond takes the paopu and uses the wooden stick from his ice cream to separate the soft fruit into two pieces. The juices run down his gloves and into the sleeves of his coat, but the blond does not care: he feels a surge of what he thinks is _love_ in his chest, despite the fact that they are not supposed to be able to feel at all, and a similar feeling is aroused in the redhead beside him. But they push it down and refuse to acknowledge it, fearful of repercussions for daring to believe that somehow they have hearts.

On the top of that tower, far above the rest of the sleepy town, a nobody who is supposedly full only of darkness yields under the weight of sky-blue eyes, and the paopu connects two boys who were never meant to exist.

* * *

“Sora’s awakening has already been delayed.”

And boy, is Riku sick of hearing those words. Namine explains the situation in full in the white room, with Riku sitting across the table from her. He marvels at how much he’s grown: when first he sat in this room, he could sit comfortably in the chair. Now he feels too tall and too broad: the side of the table digs into his ribs, and his legs can no longer extend under the table without his knees knocking. It’s another painful reminder of how much time is passing.

“His nobody, and the one that’s absorbing his memory… they’re fighting hard to become their own people. The only solution I can see is for them both to go away. There is no other way: I cannot put them all back together.”

And Riku only nods, determined. He has done so much to save Sora already: this is nothing, in the end.

* * *

He’s scoped the city out enough now to know immediately when Roxas is in the vicinity. Riku’s heart still urges him to Sora but Roxas, as his nobody, still exists somewhere in the echo of his heart. If he focuses, tunes out the weight of Sora, he can figure out which direction to travel to find the blond in the darkened city.

Roxas does not know he is there. Since he shared the paopu with Axel, that will be all he feels, and Riku would not be surprised if Roxas has never been aware of the faint echo of Riku in the world around him. It would have been present since he was born, after all.

But Riku tries not to think of it all too deeply: if Roxas and Axel, and Roxas and Riku are linked, then it must mean that somewhere in there they have _hearts_ , even if not the physical ones. And when he thinks of that, it makes it much harder to imagine trying to capture Roxas for the purpose of forcing him to merge with Sora.

Riku meets with Mickey one last time, desperate to make him promise to look out for Sora. The darkness in his heart is rising like a tide, and without Sora there to keep it at bay, he may give in completely if the fight with Roxas goes south. As it stands, it is becoming increasingly difficult to switch back and forth between himself and Ansem, and when he takes on the appearance of the latter his bond to Sora scurries away from the darkness so as to be almost imperceptible.

He makes a decision before he even enters the dark corridor. If he has to give in and unleash the darkness in his heart, he will disappear into the darkness afterwards. He cannot let Sora see him wearing the face of an old enemy, and he would rather Sora think him dead than know he gave in again.

In the end, meeting Roxas is both exactly how he thought it would be, and completely the opposite of the scenario he had imagined.

He had hoped, with every fibre of his being, that the fight with Roxas would go smoothly. Sora is possibly the only person he is aware of who can beat him in a fair fight, and even then only narrowly. Riku had hoped that his nobody would not be as strong.

But he knows, the moment he sets eyes on the blond on the street below, that this is not going to be an ordinary fight. He is going to have to give in to the darkness inside of him to beat the young man who is fighting with two keyblades.

Curiously, despite there being an echo of a link to Roxas in his heart, it is no longer as strong as it had been when he first noticed it, weak as it was even then. Riku wonders if it is an effect of Roxas sharing a paopu with Axel, or because of how determinedly he has devoted himself to keeping Sora safe.

And then it is almost over; the metal clanging of keyblades clashing rings out in the air, and Riku blocks a strike that he cannot guarantee is not a killing blow.

He stares down at Roxas, the last obstacle to waking up Sora, and tries not to look at how closely he resembles Sora. Roxas is of course his own person by this point, but his eyes are identical to Sora’s, and Riku cannot look at them without feeling pain.

The darkness in his heart is rising, ringing in his ears to a crescendo, and Riku _finally_ gives in, in order to overpower Roxas completely. It feels as though he is shaking off an old skin, and it makes him cringe to see how _easily_ it is to finally let it overtake him.

But he must do it: if not, Roxas will get away in order to take down the Organisation on his crazy _suicide_ mission, and if he dies in the process then Sora will either wake up to find no one alive remembers him, or he will never wake up at all.

He pushes down the little glow worm in his heart, the one that links him to Sora and _begs_ him not to do this, and brings forth the Guardian. Roxas does not stand a chance, and the young man is unconscious before he even has the ability to comprehend what has happened.

Somewhere in his heart the glow worm dims, scurrying away from the darkness.

* * *

When Axel is expelled from the data Twilight Town for the first time, he lands unceremoniously on his ass in front of the entrance to the mansion. Riku leans against the black metal of the gates, Soul Eater dangling loosely in one hand, and watches as the redhead becomes aware of his surroundings. He jumps to his feet when he spots Riku standing there and, unlike the rest of the Organisation members he has come across, Axel recognises him immediately due to the keyblade.

The redhead laughs so hysterically it almost becomes a cackle.

“Oho, what happened to your pretty little face?”

Riku frowns, but the expression looks odd on Ansem’s facial features, and Axel bursts into more peals of laughter as the realisation hits him. His grin turns nasty, a vicious baring of teeth as he stares Riku down whilst laughter still shakes his bones.

“Good. I hope he made you _work_ for it. I hope it _hurts_. I hope he thrashed you, beat you every which way until you had to claw through the darkness just to knock him back.”

“The same way you’ve tried to claw in to a digital world after a boy who doesn’t remember you?”

Axel breathes out through pursed lips, and his eyes narrow in Riku’s direction.

“Yeah, and who do I have to thank for that?”

Riku doesn’t answer: instead he ponders the man before him, older and taller and _technically_ unable to feel at all without a heart. He’s beginning to doubt that, though.

“You’re putting a lot of effort in, trying save someone you’re incapable of caring about.” Riku points out blithely, well aware that he is standing in the presence of one of the more powerful members of the Organisation. Axel smirks.

“And you’re putting a lot of effort into saving someone you repeatedly tried to kill.” Riku flinches at that, a physical twitch that forces him to look away from Axel. The green eyed man looks surprised, and cocks his head.

“So it really is you.” Without much of a warning, Axel brings his hand up and sends a flaming chakram spinning towards Riku. The younger man knocks it away effortlessly with his keyblade, and Axel shrugs as his weapon falls to the ground. “Worth a try.”

The redhead opens a corridor to the darkness, uninterested in fighting, but Riku calls out and stops him.

“I would stop trying to get into the alternate Twilight Town, were I you. You won’t succeed, not whilst I’m here.”

This time, Axel’s laugh is hollow. He turns to look over his shoulder at Riku, smirk firmly in place.

“You just don’t get it, do you? I’ll never stop trying to get him back.”

And this time Riku smirks, but the expression is far more sinister on a face that is not his own.

“I get it more than you could know. Because _you must_ know, I will never stop trying to get Sora back. And I can’t do that when Roxas and he are separate beings.”

And this time Axel snorts, waving his hand through the air dismissively.

“You won’t even allow yourself to view him as his own person, will you? Here’s the thing though; that little yellow fruit you all put so much faith in? _That_ thought we were worthy enough. As long as I know where he is, I won’t stop.”

Riku is stunned into silence at the pure _emotion_ lurking behind Axel’s words, and the redhead gives him another nasty grin before he steps into the Corridor. Riku watches him leave, and a hollow feeling settles in his gut. He will never ever stop trying to save Sora, and he will sacrifice _worlds_ to do so. But this is something so unexpected that Riku feels his heart break for these two.

Riku will save Sora no matter how high the price, but this revelation is another burden of guilt to lay on his shoulders, and it makes him want to weep.

* * *

 

Riku stands before the open pod as he does so often lately, but this time one hand is placed carefully on the environmental controls.

Roxas is gone, having faded away in a wisp of smoke and light, and inside the pod Sora is beginning to awaken as Riku slides the levers up with his fingers. His heart is rejoicing at the prospect of his friend waking again, the epitome of all his work and effort coming to fruition, but he knows he must be long gone before Sora truly awakens. Donald and Goofy are set to wake minutes before Sora will, but by that time Riku intends to be on another world.

The metal panels, made to look like petals, have completely opened up, and all that keeps Sora back from the rest of the world is one single pane of glass, one that will lower when the pod has drained and Sora is ready to leave it.

Sora floats in the pod, blissfully unaware as the computer begins to stimulate his mind into awareness. Riku finds the sight of him alone hilarious: his shorts are far too small, and the shirt is so tight around his shoulders that Riku wonders if he'll be able to move his arms when he wakes. Probably, it's Sora after all. He’d love to know whether or not they are now the same height, or if Sora is still just that little bit shorter. Riku wishes he could stay to listen to his voice at least, knowing it has likely dropped, but the urge to tease would be too strong and he _cannot_ be seen.

Taking one last look at the computer, Riku pushes down the green button, filling the room with the rumbling sound of water draining from three pods. He lays a gloved hand against the glass, desperately trying not to look at his reflection, and looks up at his friend.

"Make sure those goofballs keep you safe. I miss you, and..." He trails off, almost unable to voice the words he has never said but has felt stirring in his chest since his early teens. "I know you have almost no reason to believe it, and you can't even hear me anyway, but I love you. You won't be able to find me, and not even the paopu will let you this time, but I'll always be with you. I promise. Now wake up, you lazy brat." He laughs into the sterile silence of the room, the sounds of the water draining completely gone by now, and he knows he has only minutes until the dog and the duck wake up. Brushing away the lone tear that has escaped his tightly maintained composure, Riku tugs the hood up and prepares to flee. Sora is beginning to move around, though his eyes remain shut, and Riku takes one last look at the boy he loves before he retreats.

He leaves the door to the room ajar, then locks the one on the end of the corridor to ensure that Donald and Goofy go the right way.

And then he is gone, a shadow passing through a portal that has long since dissipated when Goofy is the first to awaken. Mickey meets him on the other side, in Twilight Town's plaza: the mouse's smile of greeting is sad but understanding. He hands the pick pocketed purse into Mickey's outstretched palm, dropping it gracefully.

"Remember our deal?"

"I'll tell him I haven't seen you since we closed the door. But Riku, are ya sure you don't wanna see him?"

Riku leaves without giving an answer.

* * *

Everything is blurred: he cannot see clearly ahead of him, as though his eyes are tightly closed with a bright light shining on them. A soft, smooth voice speaks in front of him, but the words are muffled, as though there is a wall between them. And he recognises the voice; it is clear but gentle, and the tone is inexplicably sad. He wants to reach out, and he tries to move to do so, but it feels as though he is treading water _and how is that possible_?

It grows warm, and his wet clothes that are sticking to his skin begin to dry. He manages to move his arms, but only a tiny bit before that voice speaks again.

“ _Now wake up, you lazy brat_.”

Sora gasps, because that is _Riku_ just as he’d suspected, and why is Riku here but invisible? Why are his eyes closed, unwilling to open even as he commands them to do so?

It is getting harder to breathe, as though there is no oxygen where he is, and Sora struggles against the invisible wall as he hears footsteps leaving. He does not hear the sound of a door closing, but he _does_ hear the familiar sound of webbed feet smacking off a cold floor.

The sound of glass sliding down echoes in his ears as a cold wave of air hits him, and Sora’s eyes open as he falls to the floor of the pod. His knees smack the floor with a loud enough crack that Goofy winces before him, but Donald is at his side with healing magic and a wide smile.

“Sora!”

He looks around the room, but there is no sign of his friend in sight, and Sora chalks it up to a dream.

* * *

That is, he chalks it up to a dream right up until they bump into Mickey outside of Twilight Town’s train station. Because then he realises that if Mickey is out of the darkness, Riku must be too.

And then he panics, because _where is the link?_ Why can he not feel it, that bright bond that glowed gold even when Riku was possessed by Ansem? The one that would _always_ be there to reunite them, to help them find each other no matter the circumstances? There’s only one reason he can think of for why it isn’t there anymore, and it sends Sora lurching to the low brick wall so he can promptly hyperventilate over it.

“Sora, you _have_ to get on the train, _now_!” Mickey’s voice cuts through the terror that is gripping his heart, but Sora shakes his head as his fingers grip the wall so hard that it breaks his skin.

“Is he dead?”

“Sora, you gotta listen to the King-“

“ _Is he dead_?” Sora repeats, the words harsher than he intends them to be. His voice sounds strange to his ears, hoarser and deeper than it had been when he’d gone to sleep. How long had he been sleeping for? His body feels strange and out of proportion, longer and ganglier than before, and now without the link in his heart Sora feels more out of place than ever before.

Mickey looks uncomfortable.

“I made a promise, Sora.”

“But _is he dead_? Why can’t you tell me that, at least?”

Mickey is torn. His relationship with Riku is an incredibly close one, and he has promised to keep the young man’s secrets close to his chest. But Sora is pale and shaking, with his sky-blue eyes widened, and Mickey cannot let him be in pain.

“No. He’s not dead.”

Sora collapses back against the wall, and runs his hands over his face.

“Then why can’t I feel him?”

“I don’t know, but he isn’t dead. I promise you that. But I can’t say anymore.”

Sora nods solemnly, and Goofy helps him to his feet. He sways only slightly, as though his legs are too long for his body, and turns to question Mickey further. But the mouse is gone, and Sora feels the weight of the small pouch on his hip.

He aches for Riku: they have still not had a chance to _talk_ , to discuss everything that had happened between them. He is certain that Riku must have been in that sterile room with him when he was waking up, for he would recognise his voice anywhere. But where had he _gone_?

Sora desperately reaches out with the full power of his heart, but the link with Riku’s heart that the paopu had forged is so quiet that it is invisible, and Sora cannot follow it.

* * *

And so, with no direction with which to follow, and no inkling of where Riku could possibly be, Sora finds comfort in his dreams instead.

Sometimes, the dreams are of himself, but he is blond and even more cheerful, watching a blue haired woman and a dark haired man dance around their feelings for each other. He dreams of wayfinder charms in the shape of the paopu fruit, and the cold ice of deception at the back of his neck.

He doesn’t remember those dreams, much.

Other times he is younger, chasing an innocent face smeared with sand across the beach, only for his silver-haired companion to turn around and be swallowed by the darkness. He stands outside the Rising Falls with a wooden sword, seeing Riku shout regret after regret at him, until the boy shatters and reforms as a taller, white-haired man who drives a keyblade into his chest and spits at the light in his heart.

And the rest of the time he is on the beach with Riku, smiling as he holds a paopu fruit and confesses feelings he has not been aware of for very long. He sits and listens to Riku’s softer voice as he confesses a love that has simmered below the surface since he was old enough to know what it was.

Those are the ones he wakes up crying from, as he wonders if things will ever be the same again. He can forgive, but he cannot forget, and he knows Riku well enough to know the older boy will carry the weight of his decisions around like a grim black cloud.

There is a long and difficult path ahead for them both, and finding Riku is only the start of it.

* * *

Sora goes so long without feeling that tether in his heart that when it finally flickers to life on the side of a cold mountain, he nearly falls to his knees in relief.

He is standing there, keyblade raised against the tall hooded figure before him, when he notices that the battle stance is _far_ too familiar: on a smaller body, he’d be certain it was Riku. But then his eyes lock onto the keyblade, that dark long wing with the eye on its hilt, and he _knows_. Sora’s keyblade falls to the snow as he reaches out a hand hesitantly.

Riku cannot breathe. It was one thing to watch Sora and to engage him in a brief battle to test his capabilities before leaving him to the mercy of those heartless, but it is quite another to be stood before him when Sora is reaching a hand out to reach for him. His eyes, so bright and so blue, gaze across the distance between them with such hope that Riku wants to give in and open his arms to the boy he loves. For a brief moment, whilst his heart is hammering in his chest as he looks at Sora, Riku drops his guard.

The tether flares to life, a thick twisted rope of gold that _tugs_ , and Sora gasps into the silent atmosphere of the mountain. It wraps around his heart, warm and yellow and contented in that way it only can when he is around the other half. It hones in on the man before him, and Sora scrambles forward. Riku hesitates briefly, before his keyblade disappears and he darts down the path along the side of the mountain.

And Riku may be faster, and he is most certainly stronger, but he is weighed down by guilt and sorrow and a heavy leather coat and boots. Sora is determined, and he somehow manages to catch up and tackle the other boy to the floor. Riku is too tall and too broad, but his _heart_ tells him that Riku lies beneath the hood, and the two boys engage in a grapple as Riku tries to flee and Sora frenziedly reaches for his hood.

Sora manages to dart away from hands that try to push him off, and soon he manages to slam the other body down into the snow and lean over him. But as his fingers go to touch the edge of the hood, Riku _panics_ , and pulls a dirty move he will never, ever do again.

Sora groans in agony as Riku shoves his knee right into the centre of Sora’s groin. He pushes the younger boy off with force, sending him rolling across the snow, and Sora lays there with pain splayed across his features.

“Ow, dirty move, that’s _so_ against the rules!”

Riku can’t help it: he laughs aloud and so abruptly that he forgets to disguise his voice, and the sound brings a huge grin to Sora’s face. But before the boy can recover and get to his feet, Riku turns and _leaps_ off the side of the mountain. Sora watches him from where he is curled in the snow, horror and disbelief clear on his face as his stomach drops. He does not hear the sound of a body hitting the rocky mountainside, however, and when he can finally stand he runs to the edge to find there is no sign of a black coat against the snow.

The glow in his heart pulses once before it disappears again, but this time Sora does not panic or hyperventilate. He realises now that Riku has found a way to supress it, and he understands that his friend must have his reasons for it. He might not be happy about it, but he tries to understand.

It’s enough, he thinks, to know Riku is alive.

* * *

In the end, their reunion is emotional and horrifically _awkward_.

Once Sora has picked himself up from the floor and released Riku-Ansem’s hand, the older boy does not stay close to his side as he had hoped. Instead, Riku settles next to Kairi, obviously to protect her, but Sora feels a pang of jealously in his heart instead.

He remembers Riku had originally suggested sharing the paopu with Kairi. He remembers being stood at the top of that waterfall in Hollow Bastion, with Riku smirking and proclaiming “as if I could ever love _you_.”

That is what goes through Sora’s head, when he looks at Riku standing steadfast at Kairi’s side, unwilling to fight just to keep her safe. It drills holes into his mind as he realises that Riku is still supressing the tether between them, clamping down on it and refusing Sora the satisfaction of feeling the lovely warm _glow_ when he is in Riku’s presence.

So neither of them talk about it. They don’t mention the afternoon spent kissing on the beach, or the fact that they’d then tried to kill each other, or the fact that Riku has spent a _year_ trying to save Sora (and Sora only discovers this long after this adventure is over, and he could _throttle_ this stubborn man beside him). It gets locked away, even when Ansem the Wise’s machine explodes.

The tether, however, cannot be blocked once Riku is released from the trappings of the darkness. Sora knows immediately once he opens his eyes that _Riku_ will be laying opposite him, because his heart is cocooned in a loving warmth that urges him to be closer to the other man. There is none of the ache from separation that had plagued him every day until he went to sleep in the pod: there is simply a contented feeling in his heart that not even Riku can clamp down now.

And so he sits there next to Riku as he wakes up, back in his normal body, and marvels at the changes in his best friend. His skin is paler, from so long away from the sun, but he is _so much taller_. If he’d been toned before, that was nothing compared to now: his arms are defined in a way that makes Sora jealous and self-conscious, with his gangly lean arms.

But even then, when Riku sits up and removes the blindfold, Sora smiles brightly at the sight of those aquamarine eyes, and his heart begins to hope again.

* * *

Roxas thinks carefully, before he does it properly. Namine stands beside him, one hand reached out to join with Kairi, and he knows even now that he will never see her again, not truly. She will join with Kairi so completely, as she wishes to do so, that her and Kairi will become one and the same. He intends to do the same with Sora, but a part him still does not want to let go.

But with Axel's death, there is not much to hold him here, and perhaps if he joins with Sora the agony in his heart will leave him in peace. A smaller flicker of it leans towards Riku, but he knows that is because Sora had shared the paopu with him long before Roxas was born. And really, it pales in comparison to what he had shared with Axel.

He closes his eyes, scrunching them shut to ignore the pain, and allows himself to just imagine he is back on that clock tower with Axel. And perhaps, in doing so, he really is there. He wishes, more than anything, that his voice could reach back into the past and say everything he had never voiced aloud.

_And then he is there, Axel beside him with an ice cream in hand, and Roxas looks across at him. He'd already said his goodbye, on Axel's death, but this feels so real. He leans over, to whisper in his ear._

_"I wish you were here."_

_Axel bites into his ice cream, and smirks._

_"I know."_

And then Roxas is fading away, again and as before, but there is no promise of seeing him again, no nostalgic "see ya, buddy." He is alone, with that ache in his heart, and his Somebody before him.

Roxas gives himself up before he can change his mind, feels his not-body dissipate into nothingness as it joins with Sora. But the pain remains.

And somewhere in Sora's heart, so does Roxas.

* * *

 _Still_ , they do not talk about it. The Castle that Never Was is no place to talk about such things as it is, but even hours later when they are sitting on the dark beach, _that_ topic of the paopu does not come up. They talk of everything else, but not the elephant in the room that is staring pointedly at them.

Not even when Riku takes Sora’s hand, and they walk through the Door to Light together, do they talk about it.

And that frustrates Sora more than anything else, once they’re back _home_ and everything sort of returns to normal.

He meets Riku every morning and they spar, making certain they remain in decent shape. Kairi joins them at noon, but that is when Riku leaves, and neither Sora nor Kairi will see him again for the rest of the day.

It repeats on a cycle, until Sora is pulling his hair out in frustration. His sparring becomes more aggressive, his desperation to get _close_ to Riku and provoke a reaction rising with each day that passes with Riku leaving at noon.

Oddly enough, it’s Kairi that breaks first.

“I’m not coming to the Island today. I’m not going back again, until you and Riku pull the sticks out of your asses and beat each other with them.”

Sora nearly spits out his breakfast. He swallows a half-eaten mouthful, wincing at the scrape against the back of his throat, and stares at Kairi as though she has grown an extra head.

“Did you just- did I hear that right?”

Kairi folds her arms over her chest, a frown on her face.

“I’ve been watching you two dance around each other for _years_. And then you both _finally_ wised up, but then all this happened and you promised to bring him home and you did, but he’s not _here_. You’re a couple of lovesick fools and you just won’t _talk_ to each other.”

Kairi kicks a stone in frustration as Sora takes a thoughtful bite of his breakfast bar.

“He just leaves! We spar, you arrive, and he leaves the island without a word! And I can’t talk to him when we spar because, you know, it’s kinda hard to talk to him when he’s so focused on thrashing my ass.”

“I don’t think ‘thrashing’ is what he wants to do to it.” The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, and Kairi’s hands fly to her lips in embarrassment. Sora _actually_ spits out the piece of breakfast bar he has been chewing so thoughtfully, and stares at her as his cheeks go scarlet.

“ _Kairi_!”

“Oh come _on_. If you can’t talk to him during sparring, find him afterwards. I’m spending the day with Selphie, and if I come to the Island tomorrow and _don’t_ walk in on you two smooching like a pair of newly-weds, I’m banging your heads together. Oh, and Riku doesn’t go home after you spar. His boat’s still there when we leave, doofus.”

Her smile is far too sunny and innocent as she waves goodbye to him, turning left at the road to head into the main town square. Sora watches her go, breakfast bar long gone on the floor, and cocks his head to the side.

Despite it all, she does have a point.

* * *

Sora misses sparring that morning, and doesn’t actually make his way to the Island until the sun begins to set. Whether that is because he is making it a point to at least get Riku _worried_ before he hauls ass on him and demands some sort of recognition for what is passing between them, or because he is too busy pacing the docks in terror and nervousness, Sora does not know. When he arrives at the island just after sunset, Riku’s boat is the only one tethered to the dock. Sora ties his own next to it, before he takes in a deep breath and prepares himself for what is to come.

He arrives at their sparring spot to see Riku sitting cross-legged on the decking above it. The silver-haired man raises a delicate brow, and Sora frowns.

“Little late to practice, aren’t you?”

“Have you been sitting up there all day like some sort of creepy-ass statue?”

Riku unfolds his legs and drops down, landing on the sand with a soft grunt. Sora looks at him, and sees how hard Riku is trying to seem _calm_. His shoulders are tense even as he appears to be relaxed, and his grin doesn’t quite meet his eyes as he stares at a point just above Sora’s eyes.

“We need to talk.”

“Do we.” Riku deadpans, charming smile disappearing into the wind. It is not a question, but more of a dare, and Sora sees in his expression that Riku would rather fight Xemnas again with a _spoon_ than talk to Sora about _anything_ other than the missed sparring practice.

“Yes, we do.” And Sora is all stubborn optimism and sunny disposition, and it is almost enough to push away the dark clouds looming over Riku. Almost. Riku clenches a fist, and Sora can see his jaw tense as he clenches his teeth.

“Do we really, Sora. Well, should we start with how I opened that door in the cave, and let the islands get swallowed by darkness? Or should we talk about how I kidnapped several women and handed them over to Maleficent? Or would you like to discuss how I abandoned you to the mercy of the heartless at Rising Falls, or how I then tried _twice_ to kill you?” The sarcasm and scorn in Riku’s voice is beyond anything Sora has ever heard come out of his mouth. This boy, no this _man_ , has changed so much that Sora can barely recognise the defeated and brooding Riku when he remembers playful arrogance and a self-confident charm.

“But that wasn’t _you_ , it was the darkness! And Maleficent, she was manipulating you-“

An expression of fury crosses Riku’s features, and the taller man takes a step closer. Sora does not move, holds his ground in a way he never would have done a year ago.

“No, Sora, it _was all me_. I gave in to the darkness in my heart, but it was _my_ darkness. They were _my_ choices. I chose to make a deal with Maleficent, and _I_ let Ansem into my heart.”

“No, I _know_ that. But you’ve made for up for it, you are _not_ the same boy who opened that door. Riku, you nearly got yourself _killed_ for me when we were fighting Xemnas! If you were still that boy, we wouldn’t _be here_. Everything changed when you closed the Door to Darkness and locked yourself in there.”

“That doesn’t justify what I did!”

Sora almost growls with his frustration.

“I’m not saying it does! But we were _kids_ , we still are! You can’t keep punishing yourself for a stupid decision you made when you were fifteen.”

“And you can’t ignore everything I’ve done just because I helped close a _door_!” Riku runs a hand through his hair, a nervous habit Sora has only just noticed he has begun to do. When Sora speaks again, his voice is softer.

“That’s not all you did.”

Riku deflates, no longer willing to argue back and forth about the subject. “It’s not enough to make up for what I’ve done.”

And then he is leaving, turning on his heel to make clear to Sora that he is done talking.

But Sora is _not_ done talking, far from it. They’ve still not discussed the fact that they had kissed on the beach with the full intention of starting a romantic relationship before _someone_ had to go and open a door that doesn’t exist anymore, and Sora _will_ get that conversation. He follows Riku, before he stands in front of the man and crosses his arms over his chest. Riku heaves a long-suffering sigh, as if they’ve been doing this for years.

“Get out of my way, Sora.”

And that’s enough to break the last thread of patience Sora has. With a groan of frustration, he plants two hands firmly on Riku’s chest and _pushes_.

“Hey, what was that for?” Riku’s voice rises into a yell, but Sora keeps pushing him.

“You are so frustrating!” Another push, and Sora follows as Riku walks backwards along the beach, trying to dodge Sora’s hands.

“I don’t under- will you _get off_!” Riku slaps his hands away, but Sora keeps going, trying to grab at Riku’s shirt and shake him.

“ _No_!”

“ _What_ \- what is _wrong_ with you Sora?” Riku darts his head away as Sora tries to grab at his shoulder, and the two become entangled in a fight of avoiding hands whilst simultaneously trying to grab the other. It looks like a child’s fight, of pushing and pulling and slapping away invading hands.

“Don’t you try and get away from me. That’s _all_ you’ve been doing since we got back! You don’t get to kiss me _and pretend it didn’t happen!_ ” Riku’s eyes widen, but the older boy twists out from under Sora’s hand and turns, ready to get away. Before he can run, Sora’s hands grab at the collar of his jacket and yank him back.

“Don’t you _dare_ Riku! Get back here-“ Sora grunts as Riku pulls away, and he yanks down harder. “I swear to the King you _will_ get here – stop struggling!”

“I will if you just _get off of me_ –“ Riku wriggles his way out of the cream jacket, leaving it dangling in Sora’s hand as he darts away again. But instead of fleeing this time, he moves _around_ Sora and grabs the boy by the red belts on his back. He uses his momentum to swing Sora around until the young brunet falls flat on his ass on the sand. They stare at each other for a moment, Riku stood there in his black zip-up and Sora sitting with his knees bent and Riku’s cream and yellow jacket curled beneath his fingers, before they burst into peals of laughter at the ridiculousness of their struggle.

It’s the first time Sora’s seen Riku laugh in nearly a year.

Riku shakes his head, kicked up sand falling from the strands of his hair, and bends down so that he is eye level with Sora.

“Are you done, you utter _man-child_?”

Sora pauses, before he manages to catch Riku off guard _again_ and surges forward, pinning the older boy to the sand. Sora straddles him and forces him to stay still, and for a brief moment they are back in the dark castle of Hollow Bastion, and Sora is begging Riku to come back.

That moment passes, but the atmosphere sours again, the warmth from their laughter dissipating. Sora sits up, goose bumps on his arm, and stares down at Riku.

“Do you love me?”

Whatever Riku had expected, _that_ was certainly not it. He blinks twice, before he physically jerks backwards in surprise.

“I- _what_?” And then he groans, because he cannot run a hand through his hair to show his exasperation due to Sora having pinned them down. “Why would you even ask that?”

A look of disbelief crosses over Sora’s face.

“Why would I – what the _hell_ is wrong with you, Riku? Did you think I’d just forget everything we did that last day on the Island?”

A reluctant sigh escapes Riku’s lips, and his facial expression changes to match it. “I told her not to put that back.”

But unexpectedly, Riku sees Sora’s expression falter, and for a moment he sees _grief_ in those sky-blue eyes. Grief, not the disgust he had been expecting.

“You told her to- _why_ would you do that Riku? Oh you’re such an asshole!” Sora grabs his shirt and pulls his upper body up to shake him in frustration. Riku winces.

“Yeah, well, she clearly _didn’t_ listen to me-“ Sora cuts him off with a smack to the chest that is more sound than pain, but it stuns him nonetheless.

“Why would you take that from me?”

“Because I didn’t want you to remember!” Riku shouts the answer as though it should be obvious, and his frustration rises with every moment that his arms are trapped between Sora’s thighs.

“But _why_? So you don’t love me?” Sora’s voice is half a whine, but the other half rings of betrayal, and _that_ hurts. Riku grunts with a guilty look on his face.

“Of course I love you, you total _sap_. That’s why I didn’t want you to remember. I didn’t want you to remember all that I did to you, and to remember that I loved you. I wanted you to be able to think you still loved Kairi, so you didn’t have to tie yourself to me.”

“Argh, you are _such_ an asshole!” Sora repeats, and lowers his head in frustration to Riku’s chest. The silver-haired boy looks down at the head on his chest in alarm, when Sora lifts it and drops it back onto his chest.

“Do you know what I remember?” Sora’s voice is muffled in Riku’s jacket, but he can still be heard. “I remember sitting here, realising that perhaps what I felt for you _wasn’t_ jealousy, but wanting to impress you and earn your love. I remember you _telling me_ you had feelings for me, and sharing a paopu with you, and I was _so happy_ even though I couldn’t say the words.” Sora raises his head, and his eyes are alight with a fire. “Some days, on both journeys, it was the _only_ thing pushing me through the day. And you wanted to _take it from me_!”

The faint light from the setting sun is long gone by now, and the moon is making its way across the sky. It is still low, but the white light is bright enough that it illuminates them on the beach. Riku is pale and silver in the low light, and Sora can’t help but think that the stunned man beneath him looks utterly beautiful.

“I want _you_ back, Riku. I know this has changed us, but you’re still my best friend and I _miss_ you. We used to spend every minute of every day together, but now you can barely handle a couple of hours. I want _you_ back, and I want to be able to kiss you and love you without feeling like you don’t want me there.”

Riku stares up at Sora, barely able to comprehend the words he is saying.

“Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

Sora snorts.

“Oh for – out of all that, _that’s_ what you pick up on? Riku, do I need to start wearing a flashing sign on my back saying ‘I love Riku’? Or will that _still_ not be obvious enough for you? Shall I make t-shirts? Replace my black vest with a picture _of your face_? Or is that _still too subtle_?”

The humour passes right over the older boy, and Sora really wishes he could throttle him.

“After _all_ that, you still trust me? Enough to want to…” Riku trails off again, and Sora gives him a shake.

“ _Yes_ , you idiot!”

Perhaps, Sora thinks, that this has all been worth it for the blinding smile he receives from Riku when he hears the absolute conviction in his voice. It is worth it, to see aquamarine eyes focused intently on his own with a look of _awe_ and disbelief. He is a vision of silver hair that almost glows in the moonlight, of pearly-white teeth and such utter _happiness_ on his face that Sora thinks this entire image before him should be illegal, for his heart aches and breaks at the sight.

Riku’s gaze flickers downwards, from Sora’s eyes to his lips, and Sora waits with baited breath as Riku worms one arm free from Sora’s vice-like grip around his arms and waist. The hand that slides up his neck and into his hair is warm and dry, and it sends a shiver down Sora’s spine as Riku’s fingers move into his hair and rest on the back of his scalp, his thumb brushing over Sora’s ear. It is intimate in a way it never has been between them, even the last time they kissed on the beach, and Riku lets out a breathy laugh as Sora keeps his eyes on Riku’s face, _waiting_.

And then _finally_ Riku is pulling him closer, and Sora adjusts his entire body in order to be comfortable, moving his legs out so he is more or less flat, and adjusting so he rests on his elbow, chest a few inches from Riku’s.

The kiss is _glorious_. Riku’s lips are warm and chapped, and he frees his other arm to rest it on Sora’s hip as Sora pushes forward, determined to ensure this kiss is unlike the ones of before. And it is, for there is no chaste hesitation, no fear that the other will pull away from anything other than moving lips. The hand in his hair lowers to cup the back of his neck as the kiss deepens, Riku’s lips opening below Sora’s as the brunet tries to quicken it. Riku co-operates only enough to keep the kiss sweet and slow, and Sora settles so that his chest is no longer hovering above Riku’s but pressed against it.

But Sora is nothing if not determined, and soon enough the slow kisses turn into breathless pants as Sora’s hand grips at Riku’s clothing, working up the zip until his hand can slip down to explore Riku’s torso. The older boy hisses at the feeling of a cold hand on his abdomen, but Sora’s laugh tickles his lips and he kisses him _hard_ to quieten him.

They stay there for an hour, legs pressed together and attached at the hip, the lips, and even then they barely separate for the fifteen metre walk to the shack. Riku pulls him over the threshold, and Sora hangs off his neck with his arms clasped tightly together at the back of his head. It is easier, Sora thinks, to hold himself flush against Riku and kiss him at the same time. But Riku holds him still, a small amount of guilt still holding onto his heart unless he gets the chance to speak.

“What I said to you, on top of the Rising Falls. I never meant it. I knew it would hurt you, but I didn’t mean a word of it.”

And Sora rolls his eyes fondly, tightening his grip on Riku. “I know you didn’t.” And he reaches up to capture Riku’s lips with his own, and for the rest of the night words are swapped with wandering hands and sweet kisses, lazy ones and desperate ones, and Sora does not want the night to end.

When he wakes in the shack the next morning, it is not to an empty shared bedroll and the sound of heartless trying to get in through the door. No, Sora wakes to a cool draught from the ill-fitting door drifting over his bare shoulders and making his skin go bumpy, and to a warm arm draped over his waist.

Sora turns, a grin on his face, but Riku is still mostly unconscious. His face wrinkles when Sora leans in to kiss his nose, and the brunet smiles. “I love you.”

Riku offers only a sleepy hum in reply, too tired and not conscious enough to register it _or_ remember it, but Sora smiles anyway and huddles in closer, burrowing himself into the warmth of Riku’s body. The sun is shining into the hut, but it does not reach the bedroll, and Sora is getting _cold_.

The arm around him tightens, pulling Sora in even closer and resting against the small of his back, and Sora relishes its warm weight. They are not perfect, and they have much further to go before things truly settle between them, but this is a start. Riku has so much guilt and anger to work his way through, and Sora knows he needs to help his best friend work his way through it. But they are here, ready to walk down the path ahead together, and with Riku's arm draped tightly over him Sora feels like he can face whatever the world throws at them. The tether in his heart is glowing warm with contentment, and Sora matches it as he looks up at the sleeping Riku.

Perhaps it’s not perfect, but Sora wouldn’t have it any other way.

* * *

Ienzo stares out over the thousands of shattered experiment pods, rusted and decayed by the darkness in less than a few years, and ponders it all. Had any of them, besides Xehanort, truly known what was to come? Would they still do it, with the gift of hindsight?

He stands straight with his arms crossed, familiar white lab-coat acting almost like a comfort blanket. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend that he is still in the lab on that fateful day that they prepared to lose their hearts. He can almost pretend that the ache in his heart is fear, and not grief.

The doors swish open, and Lea walks in. He stills wears the Organisation coat he woke up in, something Ienzo finds curious. Everyone else had awakened in the clothes they had died in, but Lea did not.

“I did what you said. I couldn’t find it.”

“Not even an inkling?”

“Nothing.”

Ienzo brings one hand up to rest his chin on, and his eyes briefly close before he focuses his gaze on Lea.

“Then I do not know what to suggest. You said you could feel it before you died? He may have completely joined with his somebody since your death. But I need more information before I can say for certain.”

Lea shrugs, understanding that this is hardly Ienzo’s area of expertise. He had hoped, however, that he would be able to detect some sign of _Roxas_ in this world. But if he has truly merged with Sora, then there is nothing Lea can do. The paopu tether is either there or it is _gone_ , and it’s looking more like the latter the more he tries to feel it.

He heads towards the door, but before he can press the button to open them Ienzo bids him to stop. Lea waits, already knowing the question before it comes. Ienzo’s voice is quiet, and he only looks down at the floor before he asks, refusing to look at Lea’s face.

“How did…” He trails off, uncertain, and swallows thickly before he speaks again. “How did he die?”

“Faced off against the keyblade wielder. Gave him a good run for it too: I heard it took just over an hour to finish him off, and even then he only faded because they froze his water.” Something chokes in Lea’s voice, and Ienzo flinches at the description. Lea continues. “He didn’t want to do it; he didn’t want to hurt Roxas. His death unsettled the keyblade wielder.”

Lea tries to keep the look of pity off his face, but Ienzo is not stupid: he can tell it is there even without looking, for Lea is far too quiet.

“Heroic, I suppose.”

Lea leaves him there, uncertain of what to say. Perhaps there _is_ nothing to say: perhaps, somewhere out there, Demyx is waking up as his Somebody, close to the water where he belongs.

Or perhaps he is simply an empty vessel, doomed to never wake up at all.

* * *

And there are rare times, during the long walks on the beach, when they think everything is done and over, that Riku's hand doesn't quite feel right in Sora’s own, when long fingers are not long enough. When the body in the bed beside him is too muscled and not nearly tall enough, when the flash of red in his periphery is enough to make him spin on his heel and _look_.

Roxas still lies within him, somewhere. The other young man has never quite joined with him as seamlessly as Namine did with Kairi, and somewhere beneath the contented link he has with Riku there is a faint echo of something that yearns to pull him in another direction, and Sora knows that it's because of Roxas. It is not a _link,_ but the forgotten echo of one that Roxas remembers sometimes, and it makes it clear to Sora that he had Roxas have never _truly_ joined. They had been apart for so long that Roxas had become his own person far beyond that which Namine had achieved.

He is both always there and never there, unconscious but influencing, and Sora often dreams of evenings on a clock tower, Axel chasing him through the streets and a woman whose face and name he can never remember come morning. He wonders if this is how it felt for Riku, when everyone had forgotten who Sora was.

It is awful, and it is gut-wrenching, but the feelings flicker so quickly and so rarely that Sora can never really remember _what_ it is that he is feeling.

* * *

It is a long day, the one when Sora finally finds freedom from the double bind on his heart. He does not pine with a lost love for Axel, but Roxas did, and Sora knows by now that his other half was intrinsically linked to the redhead. His death had been the only thing to bring Roxas out the first time, after all.

He had been forced to watch that scene again, during his long slumber as Riku dived through his heart to save him, _again_.

But he had known, during the events in Yen Sid’s tower, that something had gone amiss. He could no longer feel Riku in his heart, could no longer sense that tether that urged him towards the man he loves, but Sora had chalked it up to the fact that they were _sleeping_. And somewhere in there, Riku had known something was wrong too. There had been no hesitation when he leapt into Sora’s heart even without realising it, though he had wanted to smack himself when Xehanort had explained to him what happened. Riku should have known that he could not _feel_ the urge to find Sora’s heart because he was _inside it_. Technically.

Riku still doesn’t quite understand it, nor how he did it without realising.

So Sora wakes up, oblivious to every event that has been going on in the outside world, but of course the _first_ thing he does is to crawl to Riku’s prone body on the floor beside him. And for what feels like _hours_ , with his fingers wrapped tight in the fabric of Riku’s shirt, Sora does not actually pay attention to what is happening around him. And somehow, that pushes Roxas down and away, and Sora will later wonder if the brief conversation Roxas had held with Riku had tired him enough that he too had been unaware of the events in Yen Sid’s tower.

That is the only explanation he can come up with for _why_ he reacts the way he does when he bumps into Lea in the library a week later.

Because Sora has finished writing one last letter to Riku before he sets off for the Olympus Coliseum, and his heart feels lighter than it has in years. He is happy, knowing that Riku is out there on a mission of importance but forever thinking of him, and Sora looks forward to seeing him again. He is searching for a book to send with his letter, something to keep Riku occupied on long nights on the gummi ship, or on the first watch of the night. Sora knows that Riku will receive the book and the letter and roll his eyes, make a joke about his boyfriend being a total _sap_ , and still will hold the book close every night with the letter wedged in between the back pages. Long fingers will repeatedly press over the indents in the paper from Sora’s pen with that soft smile that Riku _never_ lets anyone see, and that alone is enough to get Sora through the hardest of any trials.

He is lost in thought thinking of this when he hears movement from across the library. Sora looks up from where he stands, a book hanging loosely in his hand, and his eyes lock with eyes so green that he does a double take. Aside from the lack of facial tattoos, he notices that Axel's somebody is identical, and he is staring at Sora with a horror that looks out of place on his face.

The horror, Sora supposes, is probably because his heart will be thrumming in his chest as Sora's is, honing in on the man before him. Sora is frozen in place, but something stirs within him, something that was suspiciously absent the last time he saw Lea.

It is almost imperceptible, but Sora feels as though heavy wings wrapped tight around him loosen, grow lighter, and the sensation pulls at him briefly before he is released. Something in his heart shifts, and Sora sucks in a gasp that cuts through the silence between them. He lunges forwards and falls to the floor, his palms scraping across the ground. The book falls with a loud thump, and then Sora is deafened by the heavy beating of wings- or is it his heart in his chest?

And then, as quickly as it had started, the moment is broken, and Sora feels the heart-aching pain lift from his chest. His heart continues its steady beat, but the sensation is as it had been before he'd fallen into the long sleep; focused entirely on Riku, and urging him towards the only man it was ever supposed to lead him towards. He feels as though a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders, as though something lodged tight in his chest has loosened and _gone_.

Across from him, Lea grins so widely that it hurts his cheeks, and his cracked lips split somewhat as joy courses through his veins. Heartbeat racing, the redhead closes his eyes before he can even allow tears to form.

Because Lea feels that link again, the one he had only ever felt an echo of as a Nobody, the one that led him to Roxas in the digital Twilight Town. It is the link that he has not felt since he had regained his body, because Roxas had joined with Sora, and the latter’s heart already belonged to someone else. And what he feels now _pales_ in utter comparison to what he had felt back then: he is bathed in sunlight, where once he was standing under a cloudy sky.

Lea grins, because he can feel the strong sensation he had only ever known through Roxas' descriptions, and that powerful, nearly crippling ache in his chest is _glorious_. It tugs at him and pulls him, making him suddenly feel alone and as if he'll never be whole again. A heart beats on the other side of that bond, a golden tether that flickers once and then blooms to life and _begs_ him to seek it out.

It is finally _there_ , agony as it is, and Sora merely stares at him as he laughs. Because the golden tether does not tell him to walk towards Sora, and the sky-blue eyes that look at him from across the room don't elicit any emotion from him.

No, his heart pulls him in another direction, to a pair of sky-blue eyes somewhere off world, to a familiar heart that he has been connected to since the moment they shared a paopu on top of a clock tower.

As Lea turns to look out the window, the reality of what is going on finally hits Sora, and he laughs from his position on his knees. Lea turns back, and extends a hand to lift Sora to his feet even as his own feet itch to take him away, towards the light at the end of his link. Sora holds Lea's hand tight as he stands, the book now under his arm, and clasps it with his other hand with a grin.

Lea’s responding toothy-smile far outshines Sora’s, and it is bright enough that the younger boy is almost stunned by it. He laughs, squeezing Lea’s hand gently, before he pushes the redhead towards the door.

"Go get him. And, tell him I want a rematch!"


End file.
